Foundation and Chaos f-9 Read online

  “Fine with me,” Klia said.

  “Does that arouse your curiosity?”

  “No,” Klia said with a sniff. “What do I need to do?”

  “First, promise you’ll learn to control your talents in the

  presence of your fellow persuaders. You, especially, Klia Asgar. You’re one of the strongest persuaders I’ve ever encountered. If you applied yourself, you could make all of us do handstands, but we’d know what had happened, and we’d have to kill you.”

  Klia felt a small shiver of dismay. She had never really tried to control herself; she had grown up with this ability, using it as naturally and casually as she did speech, perhaps more so, since she wasn’t much for conversation. “All right,” she said.

  “In return, we protect you, hide you, give you useful work. And…you get to be interviewed by Trader Plussix.”

  “Oh, good,” Klia said softly.

  “Don’t be afraid of him,” Brann said in his soft rumble.

  “I won’t be.”

  “He’s deformed,” Kallusin said. “So I’ve surmised. Plussix tells us nothing, but…” His hand indicated the office, the warehouse, their living quarters, all with one sweep. “He provides all this for us. My theory, which I’ve even told Plussix himself, is that he’s another peculiar kind of mentalic, not very good at persuading or greasing the social skids, but a type who enjoys being around those with your talents. But he never confirms or denies anything.”

  “Oh,” Klia said. She wanted to get the ceremonies over and go to her quarters. She wanted to be alone and rest. She hadn’t slept well in days. Rest-and food. Since her arrival at the warehouse, Brann had taken her to the employee cafeteria twice, and she had eaten huge meals, but she was still hungry.

  She resisted the urge to look at Brann. She kept her eyes on Kallusin.

  “I’m very glad you’ve joined us,” he said, and pressed his baby-smooth lips together. He neither smiled nor frowned, but his eyes, though they did not move, seemed to sweep her for every important detail. “Thank you,” he said, and turned to the window overlooking the largest chamber of the warehouse. Brann touched her shoulder, and she jerked, then followed the big man outside.

  “When do I swear my oath?” she asked.

  “You already have, by accepting our hospitality and not asking Kallusin if you could leave.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair. I should know all the rules.”

  “There are no rules, except you stay around here, you don’t use your talents on us or on outsiders…unless instructed to do so…and you don’t tell anybody about us.”

  “Why not put that into an oath?”

  “Why bother?” Brann said.

  “And what about you? You keep making me want to look at you. Shouldn’t you stop that?”

  Brann shook his head solemnly. “I’m not doing a thing,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me that! I’m no idiot.”

  “Believe whatever you want,” Brann said. “If you want to look at me, it’s just because you want to look at me.” Then he added, in a low voice, “I don’t mind. Not with you.”

  He walked ahead of her down a narrow industrial gray corridor lined with closed doors and illuminated by simple globes. Klia felt a flush of anger at his presumption. “Maybe you should mind!” she called ahead sharply. “Maybe you should worry! I’m not a very nice person!”

  Brann shrugged and handed her the ID card that also served as a key to her room. “Enjoy your rest,” he said. “We probably won’t see each other for a while. I’m going with Kallusin to escort a shipment of goods to Mycogen. It might take us days to conclude the deal.”

  “Good,” Klia said, and inserted the card. She pushed open the door to her room and entered swiftly, then slammed the door behind her.

  For some seconds, she hardly saw the room, she was so angry with herself. She felt weak and taken advantage of. Swearing an oath without even hearing the oath! Plussix sounded monstrous.

  Then the furniture and decor came into focus. It was spare, soft greens and grays with sunny yellow accents, not luxurious but not oppressive, either. There was a plain foam mattress, not too old, an armoire, a trunk, a tiny desk and chair, then another chair, not much larger but with more padding than the desk chair. There was a lamp in the ceiling and a lamp on the desk. A bookfilm reader lay on the desk.

  The room was three paces wide and about three and a half long. It was the nicest room she had had to herself since she left home, and in truth, nicer than the small bedroom she had slept in as a child. She sat on the edge of the bed.

  Being attracted to men, any man, was a weakness she could not afford now. She was sure her fantasy of a big Dahlite male didn’t match Brann-although he was big, a Dahlite, male, and sported a fine mustache.

  The next time, she vowed, I won’t look at him at all!

  25.

  Lodovik stood motionless but for his eyes, watching as Daneel conducted another diagnostic check, the last before the journey to Eos.

  “There’s no overt damage, still nothing I can detect here,” Daneel said as the old machines finished. “But you’re a later model than these tools. They’re not up to your level, I suspect.”

  “Have you ever diagnosed yourself!” Lodovik asked.

  “Frequently,” Daneel said. “Every few years. Not with these machines, however. There are some high quality tools hidden on Trantor. Still, it’s been a century since I’ve been to Eos, and my power supply needs replacing. That’s why I’ll travel with you. And there is another reason. I have to bring back a robot-if her repairs and upgrades have gone well.”

  “A female form?”

  “Yes.”

  Lodovik waited for elaboration, but Daneel was not forthcoming. He knew of only one female form robot still active, of the millions that had once been so popular with humans. This was Dors Venabili-and she had been sequestered on Eos for decades.

  “You do not trust me now, do you?” Lodovik said.

  “No,” Daneel said. “The ship should be ready. The sooner we get to Eos, the sooner we can get back. I hate to be away from Trantor. The most critical moment of the Cusp Time is upon us.”

  Very few Imperial ships put in to Madder Loss now, but Daneel had made traveling arrangements with a trader vessel months before, and it was not difficult to fit Lodovik in as an extra passenger. The vessel would take them to the cold outer reaches of Madder Loss’s system, to a frozen asteroid with no name, only a catalog number: ISSC-1491.

  They stood on the landing platform of a remote outdoor port. Spaceport. The sun was bright, and insects flew through the air, pollinating the oil-flower fields that surrounded the concrete and plasteel facilities.

  Lodovik still valued Daneel’s leadership and presence, but how long could that last? In fact, Lodovik had put all of his initiative on hold for the few days he had been on Madder Loss, for fear of defying Daneel. His type of humaniform robot used initiative in many important ways, however, not just to determine large-scale courses of action. He could not subdue the thoughts that rose from his core mentality. Daneel would hold humans back. Humans must be allowed to act out their own destiny. We do not understand their animal spirits! We are not like them!

  Daneel himself had said that human minds and destiny were not easily understood by robots-if they could be understood at all. It is madness to control and direct their history! The overweening madness of machines out of control.

  Something unfamiliar flitted across his thought processes-a vestige of the voice he had heard earlier.

  Daneel spoke to the trader captain, a small, muscular man with a ritually scarred face and paste white skin. Daneel turned and waved for Lodovik to join him. Lodovik marched forward. The trader captain gave him a ferocious smile.

  As they boarded the ship, Lodovik looked back. Insects everywhere, on all the planets suitable for humans, all alike, with minor local variations, mostly explainable by genetic tinkering over the millennia. All suited to maintaining ecosystems cond
ucive to human civilization.

  Not a wild creature on all of Madder Loss. Wild creatures could only be found on those fifty thousand worlds put aside as hunting and zoo preserves: the garden planets so popular with Klayus, planets where citizens could only visit with Imperial permission. He had once overseen the budgetary allocations to those preserves. Linge Chen had wanted to shut them down as useless expense, but Klayus had made a direct request to save them, and there had been some ornate quid pro quo to which Lodovik had not been privy.

  Lodovik wondered how all this, garden worlds and tamed or paved-over human worlds, had come to be. So much history unavailable to him. So many questions bubbling up now beneath the self-imposed constraints.

  The ship doors closed behind him, and he concealed an algorithmic turbulence, what in human terms he would have called an intellectual panic-not at the closed spaces of the ship, but at the opening flowers of curiosity within his own mind!

  In their small cabin, Daneel placed their two small pieces of luggage in containment racks and pulled down a small sitting platform. Lodovik remained standing. Daneel folded his arms.

  “We will not be disturbed,” he said. “We can drop to our lowest level here. We should be at the rendezvous in six hours, and on Eos within three days.”

  “How much time do we have, before you lose control of the situation on Trantor?” Lodovik asked.

  “Fifteen days,” Daneel said. “Barring unforeseen circumstances. And there are always those, where humans are concerned.”

  26.

  Vara Liso could hardly contain her rage. She raised her fists to Farad Sinter, who backed off with a small, shocked grin, and circled him in the broad public-affairs office. A number of Greys, pushing carts or carrying valises, witnessed this confrontation from the adjoining hallway with wonder and concealed, colorless glee.

  “That is idiotic! “ she hissed at him, then lowered her voice. “Take off the pressure…and they will regroup! Then they will come after me! “

  The blond major, her constant and now intensely annoying shadow, danced ineffectually around, trying to interpose himself. But Vara just as deftly maneuvered around him. Sinter was left with the impression he was in a small and embarrassing riot. By walking crabwise toward the open door of his secondary office, Sinter managed this small squall into a less public container.

  “You lost the trail!” he said, half bark, half sigh, as a Grey shut the door behind them. The Grey merely glanced at the trio, then went about her duties, nonplussed.

  “I was pulled away!” Vara howled. Tears started from her eyes and poured down her cheeks. Abruptly, the major stopped his dance and stood in one spot, trembling allover, his limbs jerking. Then, he looked for a chair, saw one in a comer, and collapsed into it. Sinter witnessed this with wide eyes.

  “Did you do that?” he asked Vara.

  Vara shut her mouth with a small click of teeth, pulled back her head on its long, thin neck, and stared at the major. “Of course not. Though he has been abominable, and uncooperative.”

  “The strain-” the major managed between clenched, clattering teeth.

  Sinter stared at her for several seconds, until Vara realized she was arousing some very unhealthy suspicions. Major Namm shook himself, steadied, and managed to stand again, swallowing hard. He came to attention, rather ridiculously, and focused on a wall opposite.

  “How did you lose her?” Farad Sinter asked softly, looking between them.

  “It was not her fault,” the major said.

  “I asked her,” Sinter said.

  “She was very fast, and she sensed my presence,” Vara Liso began. “Your agents, your bumbling police, weren’t fast enough to catch her-and now she’s gone, and you won’t let me find her!”

  Sinter’s lips protruded in thought, pressed together as if waiting for a kiss. It was a ludicrous expression, and suddenly, in Vara Liso’s heart, what had started out as admiration and love flip-flopped into bitterness and hatred.

  She kept her feelings to herself, however. She had already said too much, gone too far. Did I whip that young officer? She glanced at the stiff, silent man with a small measure of guilt. She must keep her abilities in check.

  “The Emperor has specifically forbidden me from conducting any more of our searches. He does not seem to share our interest in these…people. And for the moment, I’m not going to press my advantage and try to convince him to change his mind. The Emperor has his ways, and they must be observed.”

  Vara stood with hands folded.

  “He was convinced by Hari Seldon that this could look very bad, politically.”

  Vara’s eyes widened. “But Seldon supports them!”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “But they were recruiting me! His granddaughter!”

  Farad reached out and took her by the wrist, then tightened his grip ever so slightly. She winced. “That is a fact to be kept just between you and me. What Seldon’s granddaughter does mayor may not be connected to the ‘Raven’ himself. Perhaps the whole family is crazy, each in his unique way.”

  “But we’ve discussed-”

  “Seldon is done for. After his trial, we can pursue those intimately connected to him. Once Linge Chen has satisfied himself, the Emperor will likely not object to our cleaning up the scraps.” Sinter gave Vara Liso a pitying glare.

  “What is it?” she asked, quivering.

  “Don’t ever assume I am giving up. Ever. What I do is much too important.”

  “Of course,” Vara Liso said, subdued. She stared down at the plush carpet under the desk, with its weave of huge brown and red flowers.

  “We’ll have our time again, and soon. But for now, we simply constrain our enthusiasm and dedication, and wait.”

  “Of course,” Vara Liso said.

  “Are you all right?” Sinter asked the young major solicitously.

  “Yes, sir,” the man said.

  “Been ill recently?”

  “No, sir.”

  Sinter seemed to dismiss the problem, and the officer, with a wave. Major Namm retreated hastily, pulling the large door shut behind him without a sound.

  “You’ve been under a strain,” Sinter said.

  “Perhaps I have,” Vara said, her shoulders slumping. She smiled weakly at him.

  “A little rest, some recreation.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a credit chit. “This will get you into the Imperial Sector retail emporium. A little discreet shopping, perhaps.”

  Vara’s forehead furled. Then her face went smooth and she took the chit and smiled. “Thank you.”

  “It’s nothing. Come back in a few days. Things might have changed. I’ll assign a different officer to protect you.”

  “Thank you,” Vara Liso said.

  Sinter touched her chin with one finger. “You are valuable, you know,” he said, and was secretly disgusted by the look of sheer need on the woman’s exceedingly unattractive face.

  27.

  Though he would go before the Commission of Public Safety alone, Hari knew very well that he needed legal coaching behind the scenes. That did not stop him from hating his meetings with his counsel, Sedjar Boon.

  Boon was an experienced lawyer with a fine reputation. He had received his training in the municipality of Bale Nola, in Nola Sector, under tutors with many decades of experience dealing with the tortuous laws of Trantor, both Imperial and Citizen.

  Trantor had ten formal constitutions and as many sets of laws drawn up for its various classes of citizens; there were literally millions of commentaries in tens of thousands of volumes on how the sets of statutes interacted. Every five years, around the planet, there would be new conventions to amend and update the laws, many of them broadcast live like sporting events for the enjoyment of billions of Greys, who relished dusty and relentlessly detailed legal proceedings far more than they did physical sports. It was said this tradition was at least as old as the Empire, perhaps much older.

  Hari was grateful that
some aspects of Imperial law were private.

  Boon spread his new research results on the desk in Hari’s library office and glanced with raised eyebrows at the active Prime Radiant perched near one comer. Hari waited patiently for the lawyer to get his autoclerks and filmbook readers aligned and in tune with each other.

  “Sorry this takes so long, professor,” Boon said, sitting opposite Hari. “Your case is unique.”

  Hari smiled and nodded.

  “The laws under which you have been brought before the Judiciary of the Commission of Public Safety have been modified forty-two thousand and fifteen times since the code-books were first established, twelve thousand and five years ago,” Boon said. “There are three hundred modified versions still regarded as extant, active, and relevant, and often they contradict each other. The law are supposed to apply equally to all classes, and are all based on Citizen law, but…I don’t need to tell you the application is different. As the Commission of Public Safety has assumed its charter under Imperial canon, it may choose from any of these sets of codes. My guess is they will try you under several sets at once, as a meritocrat or even an eccentric, and not reveal the specific sets until the trial is underway. I’ve chosen the most likely sets, the ones that give the Commission the greatest leeway in your case. Here are the numbers. and I’ve provided filmbook excerpts for your study-”

  “Fine,” Hari said without enthusiasm.

  “Though I know you won’t even bother glancing at them, will you, professor?”

  “Probably not,” Hari admitted. “Sometimes you seem incredibly smug, if I may say so.”

  “The Commission will try me as they see fit, and the outcome will be to their best advantage. Has there ever been any doubt about that?”

  “Never,” Boon said. “But you can invoke certain privileges that could delay indefinitely execution of any sentence, especially if one of the sets incorporates the independence of the University of Streeling, as per the Meritocrat and Palace Treaty of two centuries ago. And you do face charges of sedition and treason-thirty-nine such charges, at the moment. Linge Chen could easily have you executed.”